Will's 1985 celica supra restoration

[Mikael Hartmann]

wow! Good job!

[bshapton]

Total respect for your ambition and skill!

[FPZero]

AMAZING!! is all I have to say. Serious dedication over there and for it being your first time doing body work you're doing pretty good. Bet you had to do a good deal of research to get this going, body work wise and all, that is.

[02taco]

Thanks guys.

My favorite saying has always been "Don't wreck them, restore them"...

I had a teacher in college who told me about a car he worker on a few years before. He said he took two halves of a 2003 Miata and put them together by drilling out all the tack welds along the seams and filling the holes with his Mig welder. This was all i really had for knowledge on panel replacement, I did a little research on welding techniques but that was all. The rest I taught myself. My teacher went a little far though, he even took a punch afterward to the steel and give it the indented tack weld look. I won't be doing that.

the next update will be what i did to the spare tire well area.

[bevani]

fark dude... totally awesome ill be watching this resto.. keep up the good work

[02taco]

Ok, as promised here is some more on my restoration.

I can't seem to find any good pictures of the spare tire well prior to repair, you'll have to trust me it was not worth keeping. The picture below kind of gives an idea of the rust.



Originally i had no idea as to how i was going to tackle this repair, but thanks to Junkie who was able to provide this piece at the same time as the 1/4 panels. Unfortunately this floor section was to be scrapped so it was not idealy cut from the car. No biggy, it just meant it would require some additional welding to stitch 3 separate pieces together as seen below.


The floor was removed to match the piece that was to replace it.




I drilled out the seam along the back of the car in order to properly insert the floor in between the upper and lower rear fascia.




This required a lot of test fitting and trimming to match them up




Preping my frame rails




And below is what it currently looks like




Passenger quarter panel replacement to follow.

[02taco]

This one was a mirror image to the drivers side........no joke, but it did go much faster as I was getting efficient by this point.
Here you can see the rust that had eaten away at my passenger 1/4 panel.





The rust was so bad that I just had to kick it and it fell right off.....well not quite, but here it is removed.



bonus rust






New one mounted





Next will be upper windsheild corners

[02taco]

These corners are a tight radius and i would have found it hard to duplicate so i got new ones off the same silver car.



On the drivers side it was pretty bad so i ended up replacing most of the front face of teh A-pillar as well as the upper corner.




upper piece ready to weld




Ready for filler.



Passenger side only required the replacement of the corner piece




Ok onto the next item.

[02taco]

Well before i can send the car off to the paint shop i thought i would redo all the suspension components.

First i replaced the rear sway bar tabs with the thicker one form George.



Then bundled up some parts to get powder coated




And there back





New super-pro bushings from George.



Now i just need to finish the undercarriage so i can mount these babies.

[memories83]

Just WOW! A very impressive restore project. As someone with no previous experience that just recently went through some (not as extensive) of what you are going through I have nothing but respect for you. You're attention to detail is impressive. Powder coating the undercarriage was a nice touch. I can't wait to see the final product. Keep up the great work.